Usually when the theme is announced, my fevered imagination starts percolating. Here's the result from this year's theme:

The Cargo Crash

A plane has crashed in the desert. It's gone undiscovered since it went down many decades ago. It's a bit strange since the inhabitants are still in their seats and the fuselage has mostly rusted away.

The plane is surrounded by string, like an archeological dig as the contents are unearthed.

There's a propellor sticking out of the ground, a bit of the engine cowling visible. A tip of one wing juts out of the ground, the other wing is marked off. The rear rudder juts out of the ground with its blinking light still visible.

The seats in the passenger compartment and the pilot seats are unearthed. There's 10 total seats.

As we inspect the seats and the remains in them we begin to draw conclusions based on what we see. The people are evidently skeletons, that's clear. They are still wearing clothing and doing what they were doing when the plane went down.

The seat back in front of them has a picture of what they were intent upon when the plane went down, kind of a summary of their destination in life. We can surmise a lot about them simply from looking at their outfits, their possessions.

There's a burner wearing some outrageously bright clothing. The seat back has this big wooden thing on fire on it. A monk in a monk's robe, with a buddha on his seat back screen. There's an alcoholic, a businessman, a worker bee, a soldier, a mother with a baby. One of the pilots is wearing a turtleneck and jeans. The dashboard in front of him says 'oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.' The other pilot is just a plain skeleton. Evidently this is death itself.

Each of the people has a tale to tell, a lesson to impart on the fragility and temporary nature of our reality. The whole scene has an unearthly quality, like something you come up upon in a dream. The plane is illuminated at night with led lamps so you can still see the interior of the plane. There are diagrams and charts, blackboards around the wreck like the excavators are maintaining journals explaining what they think happened. Cargo is scattered around the place, buried crates, bottles, clothing.

The whole piece is meant to make people reflect on what they are doing right now, what their intent is in life and whether they have a role to play in life that's meaningful enough to them to be so even if their death was imminent. Which it is.

On Saturday, the bodies would be exhumed and the exhibit closed down. A priest would preside and a bier created to carry them all to the Temple where they are prepared for their journey to their final resting place. A procession carries them.

The bodies are burned up with the Temple. The plane is removed and no evidence remains of their passage.

Thanks for the replies. I'm open to people getting on board to make this flight happen. I'm wondering about things like distributed art. Collecting a team that's geographically separated but all coordinating and choosing things they want to work on as a team that gets together on the playa to build it. Anyone seen anything like that ever happen out there? It would be quite cool to do it this way.

Let's say you wanted to build a model of how this works. Who has done this successfully, what groups or individuals have already managed this type of endeavor and have the 'blueprint' for pulling it off?

Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care NOT who writes this nation’s laws. ... S.J. Perelman

i like the idea, and definately would go view it. Even if it were a hike away. But, I wonder about MOOP, and don't like the idea of burning it.As an archeology-buff, I appreciate the relics of the dead, that exist to edify the later generations.So... where is Amelia Earhart anyway?

9ah wrote:I think this would make a awesome CORE project. I can see it as a playa version of the 'Miracle on the Hudson' plane crash... although everyone survived the Hudson.

I thought about that too. The problem is the core projects are these monolithic structures designed to burn in one piece. The art is not designed to burn that way. It would be too messy and uncontrolled. This is something you go see, check out, visit, party at, do some performance art around. It's a bit of weird surreal experience smacked out on the playa all by its lonesome self like the Lost Dutchman.

I wouldn't consider burning it, though the elements of it could be burned up, like the airplane passengers or anything else that be bundled up and carried. There's a whole element of burn safety that makes a project much more challenging.

Anyhow.. diode, I really like your Cargo Crash project! I'll definitely seek it out, and yeah, to my way of thinking, it belongs out in a desolate stretch of playa. I'm looking forward to hearing more as things progress!

The journey is at least as much fun as getting to the destination. That's always the big clue. I'm putting up a site, http://cargocrash.thefirehoop.net and placing this art description there. From there, people can start crystallizing their vision of the cargo crash. Prolly take me a day or two after I post to get something up.What I'm thinking about:Daily press conferences: learned scientists, sobbing mothers, cranks, reporters, gold diggers.Cargo scattered around the site: suitcases with artifacts, possessions, paraphenaliaSignage about what happened, how the plane went down, who was on it, Creating a persona of the person you want to put in the crash site: who they were, how they lived, what their life was like, mapping them out so they become a real person to youcargocrash@thefirehoop.net. - ping me if you're on board already.